Language instruction in primary and secondary education

[phk]

In many developed countries, such as France, Germany, and Japan, students start learning a foreign language in school from as early as kindergarten level (and I don't mean hour-a-week Spanish, I mean something where one actually remembers the language). Thus, by the time they graduate high school, most students are fluent or at least functional in their native language and one or two other languages, often including English.

Now, it is true that English is becoming a lingua franca. However, I think foreign languages are still a useful asset, for tourism, international relations, and so on, and indeed there is evidence to suggest that learning another language increases one's ability to learn one's own faster and better.

So, what would you people think about starting daily or near-daily foreign-language instruction for all elementary school students beginning from the first grade, expandable to a second language in junior high or high school? And what language options ought to be offered?

[Richard]

Absolutely.  Start teaching Spanish and Mandarin at age 4 or 5, as early as possible.  Kids that young will remember it all and will thank you in 10 years time.  I know my kids will be speaking 4 languages before going to high school.

[True Federalist]

The only problems would be to find enough qualified teachers and what would be removed from the curriculum in order to make it possible.  That said, I’d like it if Spanish were a universal elementary school requirement in the US with other languages being options, but there is no other language that would be as useful, with the possible exception of Canadian French in the northeast and upper midwest.

[Rob]

I know my kids will be speaking 4 languages before going to high school.

Good luck with that.

[phk]

The only problems would be to find enough qualified teachers and what would be removed from the curriculum in order to make it possible.  That said, I’d like it if Spanish were a universal elementary school requirement in the US with other languages being options, but there is no other language that would be as useful, with the possible exception of Canadian French in the northeast and upper midwest.

We can pay for retraining teachers and more by eliminating the eleventh and twelfth grades for 40-60% of students.

So if you pass that before 11th grade, no need to take two more years.

My proposal would be more along the lines of a university-track sorting examination. Two tests, administered in sixth and eighth grades, followed with consultations if requested to determine track (ideally, except in very clear-cut cases no child would be forced into a track against the child's or the parents' will).

Those who are willing and able to head to university will take all twelve years of grade school. Thooe wishing to get on the job track will graduate after tenth. Hopefully, this will decrease the amount of delinquency and dropouts in students who are no longer getting anything from school.

The tenth grade and the year after graduation would be an internship/apprenticeship program, well-formalized - not like the spotty, easily-cut budget afterthoughts of today's system. Students who aren't pursuing a university degree but want education beyond apprenticeship could attend a government trade school or some such thing.

Those schools (basically today's community colleges) would also double as places for students misfiled or changing their minds after graduation to take the eleventh-tweflth sequence and prepare for a university education. Ideally, students completing tenth grade int he job track and immediately wishing to go to eleventh would be able to continue in the normal grade-school program for that.

Thoughts?

[Rob]

I would oppose that. Everyone else in the world is learning English, so what's the point?

[phk]

I think foreign languages are still a useful asset, for tourism, international relations, and so on, and indeed there is evidence to suggest that learning another language increases one's ability to learn one's own faster and better.

[Gabu]

Indeed there is evidence to suggest that learning another language increases one's ability to learn one's own faster and better.

Among other things; I've heard of studies that said that becoming relatively fluent in more than one languages helps numerous things along in academia.

[Richard]

I know my kids will be speaking 4 languages before going to high school.

Good luck with that.

In Malaysia, kids can speak English, Mandarin, Cantonese, and Malay all before age 8, fluently.

[Vasall des Midas]

At primary school level?
I'm not sure if that's necessary.
But I frankly don't think people who don't speak at least one foreign language passably well belong in any sort of university. Spanish should certainly be taught in High School everywhere in America.
Not that it's any business of mine.

[angus]

Absolutely.  Start teaching Spanish and Mandarin at age 4 or 5, as early as possible.  Kids that young will remember it all and will thank you in 10 years time.  I know my kids will be speaking 4 languages before going to high school.

Word.  You stole my lines exactly.  English, Spanish (in this hemisphere), and to that list add Arabic and Mandarin and they'll be able to speak to any one in the world except the Quebecois in Canada and most Frenchmen, who, for whatever reason prefer no to learn other languages.  (I still remember hiking the Inca Trail with 15 other hikers from Canada, USA, Germany, Denmark, France, and England.  We could all speak English, Spanish, or both, except the French couple.  It was very awkward for them.)  Thus in addition to four, they should at least learn the phrase "où est la toilette?"   In case an emergency arises on a visit to Montreal.  (I can assure you that the phrase is useful.)

As a start, generally, at least in our nation's two most populous states I'd say Spanish.  For New York, it's a tougher call, either Spanish or Mandarin.  For the folks way down South, I'd say English.  Start 'em as early as possible I say.

[??????????]

-Teach english only in our schools.
-Foreign languages should not be required but offered as an extra course.
-Make speaking English a requirement for US citizenship.

Thats my views on this subject.

[dazzleman]

I am a big supporter of Americans becoming more proficient in foreign languages.  I think it is in our best interests.

I most emphatically do not support English as a second language in any circumstance.  I think that all our students should be taught in English, and that we should require English proficiency.  So I would not accept this as a trojan horse to undermine English, which is our language.

But I think it is great for kids to learn a language other than English as a SECOND language.  The younger the better.  We can't expect that the world will always bow at the altar of our language, and there are subtle benefits to speaking other languages.

Language is largely a reflection of culture, and to understand another language gives you an insight into the culture that you could never get through an interpreter, or if you only spoke English.  More of this would be better for business in the long run, as well as our relations with the rest of the world.

[IDS Judicial Overlord John Dibble]

If you'd really like them to be able to learn other Romance languages, get them to learn Latin. I've heard proficiency in Latin allows one to much more easily learn any Romance language.

Now, what would be really cool is if we can get our kids to learn Japanese.

[Platypus]

It's a bit different in AUS, because Spanish is basically worthless here, and the southeast asian languages are a lot more useful.


Basically, in every local area of 10 primary schools, at least one has to offer French, one German, Italian, Greek, Japanese, Bahasa (pref. Indonesian) and Mandarin (the most important/common languages in AUS), so that kids can either go to those schools especially, or go to the school with the language they want two afternoons a week (4 hours a week) via some kinda bus.

Alternativekly, just make each school have to teach one language as standard (harder to pick then in the US, where Spanish is the obvious choice) and offer all the others as after-school programmes. In High School, at least 3 languages out of the aforementioned, or languages associated with the religion of private schools/the community, etc. (ie, Lebanese in areas with high Lebanese populations, Indigenous Languages, Hebrew, etc.), and within a group of 5 High Schools all the languages must be offered.

I personally had no choice in my studies up until year 7. From grade 2 until grade 6, I had to do Italian, which I can barely remember :p.

In year 7, I was given the choice of Frenc, German and Japanese, and chose French (because I thought it'd carry on from Italian...wrong. Big time mistake, and we were only allowed to chpose one. i know now that German or Jap should've been my choice...).

I changed schools in year 9 and was given the choice of two of French, German, Japanese, Indonesia, or at our sister school, Mandarin. (They don't teach German, so there was a bit of a swap). I decided to continue my French, and applied to pick up German but the spots went to those who had already done it and I missed out-bugger).

Anyway, I did compulsory French until the end of year 10, when LOTEs are no longer compulsory, but continued to do it in year 11, sucked and dropped it at the end of last year.

I wish I could be btter at languages; I'd love to be fluent in at least one foreign language eventually, mais je ne pense pas c'est possible maintenant.

[dazzleman]

If you'd really like them to be able to learn other Romance languages, get them to learn Latin. I've heard proficiency in Latin allows one to much more easily learn any Romance language.

That's not necessarily true.  Modern romance languages are very different gramatically from Latin.  I would probably say that the grammar in modern Spanish, Italian or French is probably closer to modern English grammar than it is to Latin, with all its declensions and lack of any emphasis on word order.

Latin is useful for obtaining a better understanding of English, since many of our words are rooted in Latin, as well as to learn a system of logic.  I agree that this logic helps with the learning of foreign languages, and not just romance languages.

To understand Latin is basically an exercise in computer debugging, almost.  It's a very difficult language because the meaning of everything depends on the ending, even with nouns.  In English, as well as modern romance languages, you can tell the subject of a sentence, versus the direct or indirect object, by the word order.  In Latin, the words can be in almost any order.

I took 2 years of Latin in high school and I'm glad to hear that it's making something of a comeback.

[Vasall des Midas]

I can certainly vouchsafe that knowing French and some Italian helped in learning Latin.

[Vasall des Midas]

It's a bit different in AUS, because Spanish is basically worthless here, and the southeast asian languages are a lot more useful.


Basically, in every local area of 10 primary schools, at least one has to offer French, one German, Italian, Greek, Japanese, Bahasa (pref. Indonesian) and Mandarin (the most important/common languages in AUS), so that kids can either go to those schools especially, or go to the school with the language they want two afternoons a week (4 hours a week) via some kinda bus.

Alternativekly, just make each school have to teach one language as standard (harder to pick then in the US, where Spanish is the obvious choice) and offer all the others as after-school programmes. In High School, at least 3 languages out of the aforementioned, or languages associated with the religion of private schools/the community, etc. (ie, Lebanese in areas with high Lebanese populations, Indigenous Languages, Hebrew, etc.), and within a group of 5 High Schools all the languages must be offered.

I personally had no choice in my studies up until year 7. From grade 2 until grade 6, I had to do Italian, which I can barely remember :p.

In year 7, I was given the choice of Frenc, German and Japanese, and chose French (because I thought it'd carry on from Italian...wrong. Big time mistake, and we were only allowed to chpose one. i know now that German or Jap should've been my choice...).

I changed schools in year 9 and was given the choice of two of French, German, Japanese, Indonesia, or at our sister school, Mandarin. (They don't teach German, so there was a bit of a swap). I decided to continue my French, and applied to pick up German but the spots went to those who had already done it and I missed out-bugger).

Anyway, I did compulsory French until the end of year 10, when LOTEs are no longer compulsory, but continued to do it in year 11, sucked and dropped it at the end of last year.

I wish I could be btter at languages; I'd love to be fluent in at least one foreign language eventually, mais je ne pense pas c'est possible maintenant.

Non, j'pense pas que c'est possible pour toi, tant pis.
Bahasa just means "language" btw. I suppose you meant "Bahasa Malaysia or preferably Bahasa Indonesia", so basically one of the written dialects of Malay, preferably the one used in Indonesia.

[True Federalist]

If you want kids to learn a classical Indo-European language with a full set of cases, numbers, and moods, Sanskrit is more complete than Latin.

[Platypus]

Lewis-yes, Bahasa Indonesian. Because Bahasa is the word for 'language' in that language, we use it here as the name of the actual language, with the variants having the name either "Malaysia" or "Indonesia", etc.

[angus]

If you'd really like them to be able to learn other Romance languages, get them to learn Latin. I've heard proficiency in Latin allows one to much more easily learn any Romance language.

Now, what would be really cool is if we can get our kids to learn Japanese.

Japanese was one of the five foreign language choices in my high school.  It was wildly popular, probably because it was in the 80s and we had all that business with Japan, and also there was that song, and also all these americans were going to japan to make money teaching english to the japanese.  I didn't take it.  Years later, in grad school in BU when I started to meet lots of Japanese chicks, I wish I had. 

[JohnFKennedy]

I took Latin and French for five years, still know a bit of Latin and my French isn't bad and is improving at the moment as I am very close with some girls who speak fluent French - they go to a French school here in London, very useful for me, heh, been promised that I shall be taught French.

By the time I am 30 I intend to try and speak at least four languages, English obviously, French and two from amongst Spanish, Italian, German and Russian or possibly if I can pick them up some more exotic languages like Mandarin.

My proficiency will depend on my choice of career probably, current leaning is towards becoming a barrister but the idea of entering the fast stream (accelerated civil service) is interesting, they do a two-year intensive course learning to speak, read and write in Mandarin.

Arabic would be another useful language to learn and Hebrew would be nice for my Jewish heritage .

[Jake]

My school has German (4 years), Japanese (2), Latin (3), Spanish (5), and French (3).  The middle school (grades 5-8) are going to get a Spanish/Latin elective starting next year and they are planning a German/French elective in the next few years.

I study German, year two now, and Latin year three, and plan to do at least introductory Spanish and French before I graduate.  The problem is it is so damn hard to schedule languages at my school because Spanish is studied by 90% of the school, so no class is ever open, and the rest have maybe two classes all year. Quite frustrating.